Abstract
Dating agricultural terraces is a notoriously difficult problem for archaeologists. The frequent occurrence of residual material in terrace soils and the potential for post-depositional disturbance mean that conventional artefactual and lab-based dating methods often provide unreliable dates. In this paper we present a new technique using luminescence field profiling coupled with OSL dating to produce complete (relative) sequences of dates for sedimentary stratigraphies associated with agricultural terraces and earthworks. The method is demonstrated through a series of case-studies in western Catalonia, Spain, in which we reconstruct the formation sequence of earthwork features from the Middle Ages through to the present day. OSL profiling at the time of archaeological survey and excavation permitted spatially and temporally resolved sediment ‘chronologies’ to be generated, and provides the means to interpret the environmental and cultural archives contained in each. The case-studies presented here show that luminescence approaches are a valuable tool to reconstruct landscape histories.
Highlights
Farming communities have created terraced landscapes all over the world to produce diverse crops and to provide level grazing for livestock
We have shown that the combination of optically-stimulated luminescence (OSL) profiling and dating can elucidate the methods of construction, and later modifications, of a variety of morphological and structural forms of agricultural terrace
Archaeologists' attention often remains focussed on identifying specific and spatially defined ancient ‘sites’, rather than thinking more generally in terms of the wider history of the landscape. This has been because it has been difficult to date the observable stages in the life of archaeological features like terraces or field boundary banks from their origins to the present day
Summary
Farming communities have created terraced landscapes all over the world to produce diverse crops and to provide level grazing for livestock. Much previous research on terrace systems has been carried out by specialists in environmental and agricultural disciplines (e.g. CotsFolch et al, 2009; García-Ruiz, 2010; García-Ruiz et al, 2010; Bevan and Conolly, 2011). Given these considerations it is all the more surprising that the histories of terraced landscapes are poorly understood. In this paper we present the results of a pilot study designed to address these questions by using field- and laboratory-based luminescence profiling to establish detailed stratigraphies of the entirety of the exposed terrace profile, coupled with the dating of the associated sediments by optically-stimulated luminescence (OSL)
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